


Safe

by PTomlin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Emissary in Training Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Interrogation, Kidnapped Stiles, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Not Canon Compliant, Torture, no nogitsune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4833557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTomlin/pseuds/PTomlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pack gets warning that a group of hunters is on its way to Beacon Hills. Stiles thinks he's found a way to avoid a confrontation altogether. </p><p>But then the hunters show up early. </p><p>Stiles's spells are holding. The pack is hidden--but only so long as he can hold up under the hunters' interrogation.</p><p>The pack is counting on him. He has to keep them safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First fic for TW, most likely not the last.

“Where are they?”

He doesn’t answer. It’s easy, not to. He thinks about the pack.

“Where are they?”

The guy’s voice isn’t even angry, or urgent. Bored, maybe. His captors are confident. They think they know him. They think it will only be a matter of time until he breaks.

They think he’ll break.

“Tell us where they are, little witch,” the voice says, sweet like antifreeze, and Stiles has stopped keeping track of which man the voice comes from. They all sound alike, after a while.

“Tell us where they are, and we’ll stop.”

_Yeah, right._

He’s lost count of how many times they’ve hit him. Stripped down to his boxers, his pale, fragile body offers them plenty of opportunity. Though they’ve stopped using the electricity since the last time he lost consciousness, for which he’s silently, desperately grateful. Can’t answer questions if you aren’t awake, he supposes. Can’t betray your friends to their deaths if you can’t form the words.

They’ve kept away from his face, mostly, too. Probably for the same reason. Hard to talk when your jaw is broken, makes for messy interrogations. Professionals, then, or at least they’re semi-intelligent. You never know what you’ll get with hunters.

Stiles again thanks whoever or whatever might be listening for Chris Argent’s forewarning. Even officially “retired,” he still kept his ear to the grapevine. The Argent name might not keep the hunters away like it used to, but at least they still had a connection or two who thought it fair to let them know what was coming.

“Give us the pack, and we’ll let you go.”

Stiles laughs in spite of himself, in spite of the pain. Let him go? He isn’t so far gone as to believe that one. Frankly, it’s insulting.

The clank of the chain is the only warning he has before his feet leave the ground, he’s yanked upward by his raised arms, and he chokes on a scream as the metal gauntlets that encase his hands cut deeper into his wrists and his carpals threaten to dislocate under the full weight of his body.

He doesn’t hear the chain as he’s dropped, the pounding in his ears is too loud. His knees connect hard with the floor, and then the rest of him, and he curls instinctively in on himself, cradling his hands even though he knows it won’t do him any good.

They knew what he was. And who, and where to find him. Must have done their homework, too, because they knew how he cast, through word and gesture. They’d wrapped his hands in iron, and filled that iron with salt.

Immobilize and dampen. It was certainly effective.

Or hey, maybe they strung up emissaries on a regular basis. Maybe this was _Standard Hunter Protocol for Witches._

He’d stopped trying to hiss spells under his breath after the first time they’d sent his eyes rolling back with the force of the current they’d shoved into him. What insignificant spellwork he could accomplish with furtive mumblings wasn’t worth that.

And he can’t remember the words now, anyway.

“Get up, witch.”

They make him stand, pull the chain taut again, stretching his arms back above his head, and his feet are flat on the floor but his body is unsteady. He can feel the blood running sluggish down his arms, can feel the salt-laden sweat from his hands dripping into the rawness of his wrists, setting them on fire. But under the pain, or above the pain? He’s beginning to feel cottony. Somewhere in the back of his brain, Stiles knows this probably isn’t a good sign, but it’s almost nice, and he can’t make himself care.

“Tell us where they are.”

They think they’re going to break him. They think they know his measure.

They don’t know anything.

“Tell us where the damned dogs are hiding, kid.”

Stiles is quite proud, actually, of the layers of casting he’d done to hide his Pack, his family, from these monsters. A lot of research, and a little bit of Stilinski improvisation, and the result was damn near perfect. At this point, Stiles himself could give them turn by turn directions to the Hale house, and they still wouldn’t be able to find it. He could introduce them to Scott with a fucking handshake, and they wouldn’t know who they were looking at.

“Where. Is. The pack.”

He’d taking too long to answer. These men came here to torture wolves, not their skinny human. He’s not nearly so resilient and thus not nearly as fun.

He’s pretty sure at least three of his ribs are cracked. It could also be five.

There are fingers snapping in his face, and he must have been seriously drifting this time, because there’s a disappointed-looking hunter peering at him like he’s a failed experiment at seventh grade science fair.

“You look like you could use a break, kid,” he says, and it’s almost Good Cop, but the way he smiles makes Stiles’s spine crawl.  “Whaddya say, boys, think he deserves a break?” he asks the room.

“We have time,” a voice says cooly from the corner. “I could use a drink.”

The man turns back to him, and he’s close enough that Stiles can smell the gun oil on him past the _sweat-blood-exhaustion_ that clouds his senses. He’s got this look in his eyes, like Peter gets sometimes when he has horrible, horrible ideas that he thinks are wonderful.

Stiles isn’t afraid of Peter anymore, but he’s scared now.

The man nods to someone behind him and there’s an arm around his middle and a hand over his face with a rag in it. He jerks once. The cloth is cold and damp and smells--

Stiles’s brain gets fuzzy. Fuzzier. It takes him a second to connect the dots. _Drug. Chemical inhalant. Sedative?_

Muscle relaxant.

The chain goes slack, but he’s caught by the arm encircling his torso and lowered roughly to the floor. Small mercy, he thinks, but his shoulders are screaming from the change in position. He’s manhandled backward so that his back is braced against someone’s well-muscled torso and his hands are left to rest in his lap and oh god yeah that’s blood all down his arms.  Stiles wants to gag, but can’t imagine that would make things any better, so he forces down the impulse, eyes closed as he breathes.

When he opens them again, Not-Peter is crouched at his eye-level, smiling.

“The boys are afraid you’ll talk your way out of here if we leave you alone,” he says. Stiles doesn’t move, he’s pretty sure nothing even crosses his face. The chances of saving himself with his magic at this point are sitting at about two percent likelihood, but the less these idiots know the better. “We don’t want to take any chances,” he continues, “but I’d also like you to be awake for this, really contemplate your options. Ask yourself, is all this really worth it?”

He’s running something through his hands; it looks like dark thread, and Stiles tries to concentrate on the man’s face, but his eyes keep drifting down to watch the looping motion of it.

“And I think we’ve come up with a solution that will suit just fine.”

The man holds up a wickedly curved silver needle, and Stiles’s entire body slams into panic mode at that sight alone. Then the man takes an end of the thread and pushes it through the eye of the needle, slowly, like he’s putting on a goddamn show, waiting for Stiles to get it.

A solution, to keep him from talking.

_Jesus, no._

The panic redoubles and Stiles is spasmodically shaking his head, _no, please, no._  They can’t be _serious,_ they _can’t--!_ Fingers clamp the sides of his face--his visceral spasm to flee is translated as a weak rattle of the chains in his lap, the wall of muscle at his back rumbles with dark laughter--and the stark inevitability of what’s going to happen sends the bottom dropping out of his stomach.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to answer me,” the man says, holding the glinting tip up to the light for examination. “Where is the pack, little witch?”

Stiles is frozen. Whatever drugs are in his system hold him practically immobile. The hands holding him accomplish the rest. His brain itself feels like ice, because there is no choice, not really. He can’t answer. He _won’t_ answer. He _can’t answer. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t--_

He’s crying, and he doesn’t care.

 _The pack is safe,_ a little voice whispers in the back of his head. And he’s held out this long, hasn’t he? He tries to let his anger override the fear.

The pack is safe.

He’s fucking going to keep them safe.

“ _Fuck you,_ ” he says, and the hatred is a warm, living thing in his voice.

The man sighs, shakes his head, and leans forward. Stiles can’t hold back the sob-like sound that hits the back of his throat as the man reaches for his face. The needle flashes in the corner of his vision before the sharp point bites into the skin of his lip and through and Stiles swoons.

\---

Whatever sedative they’d given him is wearing off, but he’s still so, so tired. They’d strung him up again, arms literally stretching toward the ceiling, but they’d left him kneeling on the concrete. Small mercy, he thinks again. The metal digs into the still-oozing gashes on his wrists, and his hands are in a weird state somewhere between _agonizing pain_ and _completely numb._ He’d tried standing, earlier, to give them a break, but it had made him dizzy, which was worse. The aftermath of the fear-adrenaline makes his head throb enough as it is, and he can’t afford nausea right now.

There’s metal against his ruined mouth. What’s basically an iron mask covers the bottom half of his face from nose to chin, because just _sewing his fucking mouth shut_ wasn’t enough. Because they _weren’t taking any chances._ It’s a heavy, crude thing, obviously made to muzzle werewolves, and he’s pretty sure they locked it on him. At least it reminds him not to try to move his jaw, he muses grimly.

He wonders how many werewolves died wearing one of these things.

Stiles thinks of those wolves, thinks of them dying, never getting away from the real monsters. He thinks of the ones that escaped. There had to be a few, even murderous code-breaking hunters can’t have perfect murder-records, can they? He thinks about how those wolves could heal, and about how he’ll have to heal when he gets out, human-slow.

He’d struggled, when they did it. Even drugged as he was, and slipping in and out of consciousness, it didn’t stop the terror, the instinct to get the fuck away from the man with his thick fingers and thick thread and sharp sharp needle _pushingpushingpushing_ into his flesh.  The drag of the thread through his lips, the bruising grip against his jaw, god, just more nightmare fuel on his already generous fucking pile.

His face _hurts._

Stiles closes his eyes, calms his breathing where it echoes hollow against the mask, slows his racing heart. Staves off the panic attack threatening to bubble up inside him. Can’t have that, not now. The pack’s safe. What’s done is done. It’s over. Fear is a useless emotion, it can’t help him now. (Don’t think about what will happen when they come back.)

_The pack is safe, you kept them safe, everything will be okay. The pack is safe._

He focuses on the words until they drown out everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be completely honest, this is all D*sney's fault. Those shackles they put on Elsa? Yeah, sorrynotsorry. So technically this fic was, in part, inspired by Frozen. The rest was my odd enduring oral fixation.
> 
> The cavalry comes to the rescue in chapter 2!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, I got distracted by other projects. ;)

Stiles was supposed to meet them at the house. He was going to check in with his father at the station, and then meet them all at the Hale house. He’d made it a stronghold, he’d said. Said it was the safest place for them.

“Not like, a literal stronghold,” the Stiles-voice in Derek’s head echoed, “in the traditional sense of the word, walls and weapons and all that. But magically undetectable. I’ve got individual workings on each of you, and they should do just fine on their own, but with one on the house too, we’re like, double protected, and also there’s fewer loose ends for them to chase.”

“And your dad is safe?” Derek had asked him. Sheriff Stilinski was practically pack too, at this point.

“He will be, once I give him this.” Stiles held up some sort of amulet on a string. “It’s not the same thing as what I’ve got on the rest of you, I think it would be a little suspicious if they, y’know, wanted to talk to the Sheriff for some reason and couldn’t find him. We don’t know if they know he’s connected. Also if they do actually mess up enough to get the human law called down on them, I’d like my dad to still be able to do his job and haul their asses to jail.”

It’s what they were counting on. They’d hide out for a few days, until the hunters got bored, or got caught doing something illegal, or at least until they had a better plan with how to deal with all of this.

“And you? You’re safe out there?” Derek had asked, but Stiles had shaken his head, a wry smile on his face.

“The individual ones won’t work on me. I told you before dude, it’s some weird rule, magical feedback thing. It’s why we’ve got the house!” he’d insisted at the look of alarm Derek knew he’d been wearing.

“But you’re not going to be _in_ the house.”

“For like, an hour, man. Chill. Argent said they were still like a full day’s drive from here. Without bathroom breaks.” He had given Derek a look like the hunter’s roadtrip bathroom breaks were somehow part of their grand plan for defense. Derek had rolled his eyes appropriately.

“Be back as fast as you can,” he’d said.

“Yessir Big Bad,” Stiles had struck a mocking salute. “I’ll run, run, run.” He’d matched Derek’s scowl with a twinkling grin and stepped into the circle of Derek’s body. “You worry too much, Sourwolf,” he’d said, and swooped in to kiss his face before sauntering towards the jeep, swinging his keys.

Derek stared after him. They had an odd relationship.

But one hour had turned into two and Stiles still hadn’t come back.

Derek had paced the room while Scott called the Sheriff, who’d told them Stiles had been to the station, but had left already left for the Hale house.

Ages ago.  

The Sheriff put an APB out on the jeep. They found it, sitting empty, in it’s normal place in the Stilinski’s driveway. Stiles’s phone was on the seat, screen still lit up with the unread texts and missed calls they’d been frantically sending.

They didn’t find Stiles.

Derek was furious with himself, furious with the hunters, furious with Stiles. Why hadn’t _he_ taken the amulet to the Sheriff? Why hadn’t he made Stiles stay at the house? He was protected. Stiles wasn’t. It would have made _sense_...

_Too late now. Focus on finding him._

It had taken them hours--hours of running across town and back again, searching for a scent, searching for a _clue_. They’d got practically nothing off the jeep, and it was hard to track someone you’d never even laid eyes on, in the case of the men who had him. All that the pack had to go on, really, was Stiles, and his scent was already all over Beacon Hills.

It was Scott who eventually picked up the scent they needed, a trail that led them to the outskirts of town where buildings were few and far between and an old abandoned specimen with part of its roof caving in had several newer-looking vehicles parked conspicuously outside.

Derek had fidgeted impatiently while the rest of the pack got into position. Stiles had better still be alive.

Plan A had gone to hell.

Fortunately, Plan B was still an option.

\---

Stiles isn’t asleep, so he doesn’t wake up when the door clicks once and swings softly open.

He isn’t exactly awake either, so he doesn’t hear the small gasp, or the quick footsteps that stop abruptly in front of him.

He does feel the hands on his face.

He jerks, cries out-- _oh god oh god they’re back they’re back--owFUCK,_ his face hurts, everything hurts _, don’t pull at the stitches, Stiles, don’t show them weakness, don’t show them fea--_

But it isn’t the hunters. _Derek_ is staring him in the face, eyes wild, mouth open--he’s saying Stiles’s name, over and over, interspersed with something meant to be soothing, Stiles thinks, but he isn’t hearing it properly, is still struggling back from that place of _not-sleep, no-rest, so fucking tired…_

“Stiles!”

He closes his eyes, squeezing tight, willing the exhaustion, the disorientation, to the back burner for just a while longer. _Focus. Focus._

When he opens his eyes again, the world is a little sharper, and feels less like the horrible waking dreams he’s been having for--how long had it been since the men left him here alone?

He has no idea.

He’s nodding, meeting Derek’s eyes, nodding, because he doesn’t know how else to show that he’s present, he’s here now, and Derek’s hands are still around his face, too gentle, because of course Derek is afraid of hurting him, but Stiles just wants him to press and press until he can’t remember the imprint of those other fingers against his jawline, bruising into his cheekbones--

 _Oh god, the bruises._ No wonder Derek’s touching him like he’s made of glass, he must be one fucking gorgeous shade of purple by now.

Derek wipes at the corner of one of his eyes with his thumb, and Stiles is suddenly conscious of how wet his eyes are. Whatever, he’s practically shaking with relief, knowing that those assholes aren’t gonna lay another hand on him, not when Derek’s here, not now that the pack has found him, found _them_.

Plan B hadn’t exactly taken into account his being kidnapped. Lydia will be furious with him. He swallows down a hysterical giggle, swallows around the taste of old blood in his mouth.

“We’re getting you down,” Derek tells him. He nods, and Derek’s hands leave his face to brace his arms, and which Stiles literally cannot even feel at this point. That’s going to be real fun when the circulation returns. Derek looks at something, someone, behind him, and says, “Slowly.”

The chain lowers. Stiles sags, and _god_ , his skin feels like it’s morphed into something more solid than skin should be, something that doesn’t want to move the way he’s moving now, and it hurts, and the muscles beneath that hurt and he’s fucking shaking all over, even his hands that he can’t feel, trembling, jerking, as he’s lowered, as he’s released.

He can’t help the small sob that escapes him as he pitches toward Derek, who steadies him, draws him in. He knocks his head against Derek’s shoulder and just stays there for a minute. He wants to empty his brain and breathe Derek in and forget.

Instead he’s thinking about infection rates and physical therapy.

The road ahead is gonna suck.

Derek is rubbing circles into his shoulder, letting him catch his breath. It isn’t the loudest thing in the room anymore, and Stiles is just now starting to notice. There are footsteps in the room, and the sound of fighting comes muffled and distant through the walls. He sits back, with some effort and a hand from Derek, crossing his legs-- _fuck his fucking knees_ \--beneath him.

Allison is watching them, her bow slung across her back. She’s shooting glances at Lydia, who is stationed at the door on watch. And to his right, Isaac finishes unlooping the other end of the chain from the pulley system in the ceiling and lets the tail fall to join the rest of the haphazard coils on the floor.

“Let’s get these things off you.”

Allison moves forward like that’s her signal, tossing something like a set of keys to Isaac, who catches it and moves behind Stiles. “You remember what to do?” Allison asks, and Isaac says yeah, in a tone that implies she hadn’t needed to ask. She’s been teaching him lockpicking, and he’s not bad. (But he’s not as good as Stiles.)

Stiles tenses reflexively when Isaac leaves his sightline, and god, it’s _Isaac_ , he may be a dick sometimes, but he’s not gonna fucking _hurt_ him. Stupid fucking trauma, he’s read the studies. He’ll be jumping at shadows for weeks. He tries to hold himself in check, but he knows Derek notices when Isaac’s hands go to work on the back of his head and Stiles gives an involuntary flinch.

Allison kneels in front of him, pulling out her own set of picks, and he focuses on her instead. She’s looks at him, her sunshine smile tinged at the edges with desperation, and Stiles is getting really afraid to look in the mirror if this is how they’re all looking at him now, like he’s…

Broken.

He isn’t, but it will take a while to convince them, and probably nearly as long to convince himself. He’s feeling the cracks, and they aren’t encouraging. If he wasn’t so _tired_ …

(They’re not going to like what they find under the mask.)

Allison gets her first lock undone before Isaac has managed his, and when she lifts open the first manacle he forgets about the salt and it comes pouring out, the large crystalline, crushed-powder pieces of it tumbling like milky diamond fragments all over Allison’s lap. Her alarm shows in her face, and it makes Stiles want to hide himself away. _Don’t look at what they did to me, save yourself the horrors, and the nightmares._

_I did this, to save you._

“Got it,” Isaac says, as Allison goes to work on the second lock.

Stiles tilts his head forward, feels the metal start to slide. He’s got this dichotomy inside him--the surface is calm, but he can feel it, just underneath, the hysteria that sits like a well beneath his skin, winding it’s way to the surface through the spaces he can’t keep closed.

Derek helps ease the muzzle from his face, and Stiles’s skin is hot and sweating beneath it, but the cool air just makes him feel suddenly naked. He feels like he should be loosening his jaw, opening his mouth wide to stretch, giving them all a grateful smile and maybe a classic Stiles one-liner. _Looks like someone finally found a way to shut me up, badum-tsch!_

Yeah, okay, so he might be closer to hysterical than he thought.

It’s when Derek goes to wipe the blood from Stiles’s chin that he notices, and at first there’s confusion, but then Stiles raises his face just slightly, just into the barely-there light, and Derek understands. And in that moment of comprehension, just for a second, his eyes flash brightest blue.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Isaac says. Allison looks up at that, and gasps, loudly enough that Lydia comes running halfway across the room. Her eyes go wide and then hard, her mouth a fierce line.

“Plan C,” she says, and stalks back to the door, and out. Isaac follows her.

Stiles spare a quick, uncharitable thought for the hunters. Plan C is Derek’s favorite. He hates loose ends.

Derek is visibly holding himself together, teeth a little sharper than human and breath coming hard. Stiles can see it written all over his body, he wants to hurt the men that hurt Stiles, but Stiles knows he also won’t leave his side. A long time ago, Stiles would have said it was the instincts of the wolf against the man, but Derek’s told him that isn’t how it works. There’s no line where Derek the human and Derek the wolf are separate, and the instinct to protect, and the instinct to kill come from both, because they’re irrevocably one thing, one person. One Derek.

Stiles watches his fingers flex against thighs, claws growing and shrinking as he masters his fury. It’s kind of funny, Stiles thinks, how Derek’s distress is keeping him calm.

Allison pulls one of the knives from her boot sheath, and Stiles knows how sharp those things are. She holds it out, hilt first, to Derek, who frowns at it in typical Derek fashion.

“Can you handle it, or do I need to?” she asks, and Derek looks at Stiles, looks at the knife, and takes it from her delicately. She gives a small nod, satisfied, and goes back to her work on the lock. There’s more than a bit of dark, sticky blood on her hands. He’s distantly aware that it’s his, and feels oddly guilty about it.

But then Derek’s palm is cupping his cheek, and Stiles braces himself for the knife, but instead there’s black lines crawling up Derek’s arm, and _oh_ … Stiles groans, a sound that comes from the depths of his soul, and leans into that hand, because holy shit, you never realize how much it hurts until it doesn’t, do you? He’s lightheaded with the sudden ebbing of the pain, drugged on the endorphins that seem to rush into the void it leaves, and he’s suddenly, simultaneously aware of the throbbing in his wrists, and that’s when Derek raises the knife.

“Hold still,” is all he says.

It’s brutal. The stitching wasn’t loose, by any means, and the swelling makes it almost impossible to get at the thread without slicing into his skin along with it. The thread sticks to the gore and doesn’t want to move. Derek tries to keep drawing the pain, but he needs both hands, and the extra concentration.  Allison has to stop to help him get at some of the worst bits of thread. Stiles holds still and closes his eyes and takes deep breaths through his nose. Tries not to think about how weird it is that they’re pulling things out of his face. Tries not to think about anything. There are too many hands too close and it feels too much like it did when the stitches went in and the process of extraction feels like it’s taking hours when really it’s probably only a handful of minutes.

“That’s the last of it,” Allison says, and Stiles blinks himself back into focus. “Let’s get--”

“Incoming!” yells Lydia from somewhere down the hall. Heads turn, and there’s a figure running toward them, one of the hunters, one of the men that did this. He just clears the doorway, and Allison’s arrow takes him in the chest at the same moment Stiles’s fireball engulfs his face.

Derek grabs at him, because somehow Stiles ended up lunged halfway across his near shoulder. His one arm that isn’t still cuffed is thrown over it, outstretched and smoking slightly at the palm.

Lydia pokes at the corpse with her toe. “Slightly overkill, but nice job,” she says idly as his head smoulders.

Stiles collapses into Derek, burying his face in Derek’s neck, and Derek gently puts his arms around him. _Fuck that_. He pulls back and presses his forehead to Derek’s, noses crushed together because their lips can’t be, because Stiles thinks he might actually scream, and how the fuck is Stiles supposed to have fucking victory makeouts now, dammit, it’s so fucking unfair.

“Stiles--”

 _“Hold me dammit, I don’t care if it hurts,”_ he tries to say, but nothing comes out except coughing, so he surrenders to it. It doesn’t really help, and of course no one just happens to have a water bottle with them. He hears Lydia order Isaac to go find some water though, and Derek rubs his back and takes some more of his pain.

Allison catches his wrist again and Kira walks in just as the hinge swings open and salt goes skittering everywhere. “Scott says--oh, _Stiles_.”

“m’okay,” he manages to rasp at her, even as he curls up in a ball in Derek’s lap. Truthfully his head is buzzing in a way that says he’s likely to pass out any second now, so screw dignity, he thinks. The adrenaline of his rescue is wearing off, the energy toll from his parting gift to that hunter is hitting him, and the pain drain is slowly removing from him any will to stay awake.

The hunters are dealt with, his pack is here.

_He’s safe._

“What’s our status?” Allison asks, and he hears it like he’s inside a bubble, and she’s miles away.

“Four dead,” Kira says. “Well, five with this one I guess. Four still alive, Scott’s wiping the last one’s memory now. Malia’s healing a nasty gash, but she’ll be fine.”

"Scott vetoed plan C?" Derek says, and Stiles likes the way it rumbles through his ear where its pressed to Derek's collarbone.

“Unfortunately," Lydia says. "But he made a good argument so I didn't fight him. On that note, the sheriff is on his way.” And just as Stiles’s weary brain is attempting to struggle back into panic mode she adds, “He’ll meet us at the hospital when he’s done here.”

Good. He doesn’t want his dad to see him like this. 

“Let’s get Stiles to the car,” says Allison. _Yeah alright,_ Stiles thinks. _Time to move._ He thinks maybe he tries to get up. He’s definitely thinking about thinking about getting up. Because reasons. He can’t recall the specifics.

Moving is _hard_.

“Hey,” Derek says in his ear. His voice is soft and his arms are warm. The pack is safe, and Stiles can rest now. “I’ve got you. Just let me.”

Stiles's job is done. So he does. 

\---

When Stiles wakes up again, it’s to white sheets and beeping machines and his father asleep by his bedside. He tries to think back to how he got here, but it’s all in fragments.

He remembers seeing Scott’s anxious and still-bloodied face.

He remembers being handed a bottle of water, but he doesn’t remember drinking it.

His throat feels less like hell though, so maybe he did?

Stiles turns his head--he’s stiff, but the meds are good, and the bed feels like heaven--and sees Derek asleep on his other side.

There’s a balloon that says GET WELL SOON tied to his bed and a homemade card sitting on the small table by his head. His phone is there too; he decides he’s too tired to reach for it, but even as he’s glancing at the screen it lights up again and it looks like he’s got about thirty messages from Scott alone.

Derek is shifting in his chair. Stiles’s heartbeat must have woken him. Maybe the change in his breathing.

 _Werewolves_ , he thinks.

Stiles watches as he opens his eyes, as he realizes that Stiles is watching him.

“Hey,” he says, breaking into one of his rare, heart-stoppingly soft smiles.

“Hey, Sourwolf,” Stiles says back.

“How do you feel?” Derek’s voice is hushed in the early-morning stillness of the room.

Stiles shrugs, wrinkles his nose at the tightness in his shoulders. “Kinda sore, kinda high. The hunters?”

Derek scowls. “They won’t be bothering us again.” He's probably still mad that he didn't get to break any hunters' spines. 

“And everyone else is alright?” His mouth feels weird when he moves it, so he attempts to not.

Derek nods. There’s more Stiles wants to know, more he should probably ask about, but it seems like so much work right now and he’s sleepy in a rainy Sunday morning kind of way. For the meantime, they're safe, _really_ safe. Another crisis conquered.

And that's all that matters.  _  
_

“C’mere then baby,” Stiles says, doing his best imitation of a lazy grin while not moving his lips. “Gimme some of that magic lovin’.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Those drugs they have you on must be good.”

“This is allllll me,” he says. Maybe he could learn ventriloquism. Freak Scott out.

“Uh-huh.” Derek scoots forward to take his hand, careful of the bandages.

“Hey Derek,” Stiles asks with his eyes closed, “Do I look like Freddy Krueger?”

“No, Stiles.”

“Do you think I’d make a good ventriloquist?”

“Sleep, Stiles.”

“But really.”

“You can be anything you want to be,” Derek deadpans.

“You’re just indulging me.”

“I am. You as a ventriloquist would be legitimately terrifying.”

“Psh,” Stiles scoffs. “I’m already legitimately terrifying.”

Derek leans in and presses a kiss against his temple. “I certainly can’t argue with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do alert me if anything looks weird, I'm terrible at proofreading. Also, I welcome all criticism and observations! Hopefully I'll be writing fairly regularly for this fandom, even though I don't really watch the show anymore. 3 
> 
> (also my main tumblr is ptomlins but I've thrown most of my teen wolf reblogs on my side tumblr yourladyships just fyi)
> 
> I apologize for the lack of Scott?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be completely honest, this is all D*sney's fault. Those shackles they put on Elsa? Yeah, sorrynotsorry. So technically this fic was, in part, inspired by Frozen. The rest was my odd enduring oral fixation.
> 
> The cavalry comes to the rescue in chapter 2!


End file.
